Business
Machine Translation in Action: Duolingo turns to AI translation to expand its most popular courses to all 28 user languages
AI is bringing a massive boost in productivity to Duolingo, maker of the most popular app for learning languages.
Tech & Society
Letters
How AI Fund Is Building AI Builders: AI-enabled coding empowers anyone build software that boosts productivity and makes life easier. Here’s now non-engineers at AI Fund are building apps for fun and profit.
Everyone can benefit by learning to code with AI! At AI Fund, the venture studio I lead, everyone — not just the engineers — can vibe code or use more sophisticated AI-assisted coding techniques.
Letters
Cut Research Funding, Weaken the Nation: Open scientific research makes the U.S. stronger. Cutting funding risks national competitiveness and security.
I am alarmed by the proposed cuts to U.S. funding for basic research, analyzed here, and the impact this would have for U.S. competitiveness in AI and other areas.
Tech & Society
Did GPT-4o Train on O’Reilly Books?: Study shows OpenAI’s model can identify verbatim excerpts from paywalled books
A study co-authored by tech-manual publisher Tim O’Reilly shows that OpenAI trained GPT-4o on parts of his company’s books that were not made freely available.
Machine Learning Research
Claude 4 Advances Code Generation: Anthropic debuts new Claude 4 Sonnet and Claude 4 Opus models, featuring top benchmarks in coding
Anthropic continued its tradition of building AI models that raise the bar in coding tasks.
Tech & Society
Grok’s Fixation on South Africa: xAI blames unnamed, unauthorized employee for chatbot introducing "white genocide" into conversations
An unauthorized update by an xAI employee caused the Grok chatbot to introduce South African politics into unrelated conversations, the company said.
Business
EU Loosens AI Regulations: European regulators move to relax some AI Act rules on developers’ liability, other provisions
The European Union made an abrupt U-turn away from its stringent AI regulations. Meta promptly adjusted to the loosening restrictions.
Machine Learning Research
The User Is Always… a Genius!: OpenAI pulls GPT-4o update after users report sycophantic behavior
OpenAI’s most widely used model briefly developed a habit of flattering users, with laughable and sometimes worrisome results.
Letters
The AI Revolution Comes to Grade-School Classrooms: Kira Learning is using AI to help teachers individualize computer-science education and address social-emotional needs.
I hope we can empower everyone to build with AI. Starting from K-12, we should teach every student AI enabled coding, since this will enable them to become more productive and more empowered adults.
Machine Learning Research
New Image Generator for OpenAI API: OpenAI launches API access to GPT Image 1, ChatGPT’s viral image generator
ChatGPT’s image generator is available via API.
Business
U.S. Tightens Grip on AI Chips: U.S. makes new rules for AI chip export rules to China, launches Nvidia investigation
The U.S. government escalated its long-running effort to block China’s access to cutting-edge AI hardware.
Business
The Fall and Rise of Sam Altman: Inside Sam Altman’s brief ouster from OpenAI
A behind-the-scenes account provides new details about the abrupt firing and reinstatement of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in November 2023.